Michael Gove is a tenacious minister, so whatever his motives, it is good for the environmental cause that he has decided to make it his personal hobbyhorse.
Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Tories should be capable of looking like reliable stewards of the environment. Conservation and conservatism are obviously related. Yet a passion for green issues is a fairly reliable indicator of a voter’s aversion to backing Theresa May at the last election. MPs have been taken aback by the ferocity of reaction to reports that Conservatives had voted against recognising sentience in animals last month. Impassioned rebuttals could not hold back the tide of anger. It expressed a suspicion that animal cruelty was just the sort of thing one might expect from a Conservative – even if the facts were garbled.

Downing Street has been spooked by that episode, which reinforces polling evidence that Tories are seen as uncaring. Mrs May had, after all, pleged a free vote on foxhunting in the manifesto. Contempt for the natural world is an emblem of their supposed callousness. So MPs have been briefed by Gavin Barwell, Mrs May’s chief of staff, that care for the environment is to be the unifying principle across a range of policies designed to rehabilitate the party’s reputation. This is hardly a new problem. David Cameron memorably invited the public to “vote blue, go green”. The limits of that message were clear even then. An episode commonly recalled from that era was the story of Mr Cameron cycling to the Commons, followed by a car bearing a change of clothes. The eco-conversion was superficial and seen as such. Once the Tories had captured No 10, the greenery was abandoned.

Attempts to revive it now are led by the environment secretary, Michael Gove, who was once a cheerleader for “modernisation” under Mr Cameron. Mr Gove has backed a ban on pesticides that harm bees , mooted a new domestic authority to compensate for the loss of European environmental regulation after Brexit and pledged to tackle plastic waste. It is easy to dismiss these as symbolic gestures by an ambitious politician raising his profile. But Mr Gove is a tenacious minister, so whatever his motives, it is good for the environmental cause that he has decided to make it his personal hobbyhorse.

Yet when it comes to rehabilitating the Tory image, the obstacles will not be cleared by one minister wielding a handful of initiatives. Mrs May has shown little interest in green matters. Much more problematic is the Tories’ financial dependence on big corporate donors, who expect regulator favours for their munificence. Supporting business and keeping the planet safe do not have to be mutually exclusive goals, but there are trade-offs that many Conservatives find uncomfortable. It does not help that the right wing of the party wears an ideological streak of climate-change denial. Mr Gove’s eco-friendly interventions cannot obscure a controversial record of voting against measures to halt global warming.

There is an honourable Tory tradition of environmentalism. Margaret Thatcher was instrumental in international action to ban the CFCs that damaged the ozone layer. A strain of conservative philosophy is appalled by the vandalism of the natural world caused by human recklessness and arrogance. Yet those tendencies have, in recent decades, been subordinate to a more rapacious, ultra-free-market variant of Conservative ideology. If the Tories want their caring credentials to be taken seriously they should go beyond presentational gimmicks and forage a little deeper in their party’s intellectual roots.